• Level of measurement
• Structural equation model with latent variables
• Pragmatic
• Case-based

• Method: Guttman scaling
  • Each component is a binary (or more complicate) question.
    • "Evaluation your Instructor":
      • Is your instructor handsome? (Yes/Sure/Indeed)
      • Is your instructor knowledgeable? (Certainly/Absolutely/Definitely)
      • Do you feel he is the best instructor? (For sure/Of course/Oh,yeah)
  • The score is the accumulation of the components.

So, if your instructor get a score in 3 ~ 9, then you will know he is:

• 

  as he lets you to evaluate him as above.

• Coverage: 167 countries
• Period: 1800–2015
• Scoring:
  • Each state has two scores: autocracy vis-a-vis democracy
    • The competitiveness of political participation (1‐3)
    • The competitiveness of executive recruitment (1‐2)
    • The openness of executive recruitment (1)
    • The constraints on the chief executive (1‐4)
  • The components are added up as a "polity" score (-10 to 10) for each state.

• Some underlining assumptions:
  1. Adding up?
  2. Equal distance between scores.
  3. Experts?

Method: statistically seeking for the "latent" variable.

\[ \begin{aligned} Democracy &\sim \beta_a\mbox{Competitiveness of political participation}; \\ Democracy &\sim \beta_b\mbox{Competitiveness of executive recruitment};\\ Democracy &\sim \beta_c\mbox{Openness of executive recruitment};\\ Democracy &\sim \beta_d\mbox{Constraints on the chief executive}. \end{aligned} \]

Pros:

1. Brings together various variables
2. Focus directly on causal connections
3. Random error and bias
4. Reduce measurement errors

Cons:

1. Intuitive (substantive) meaning?

Sensible rather than puristical measurements.

• "In spite of all their conceptual and observational differences, the various approaches yield highly similar classifications of regimes. Hence, there is no reason to think that the results that follow depend on the particular way regimes were classified" Przeworski et al. (2000, 55)

• Issues:
  • Ad hoc treatments of descriptive inference
  • A lack of systematic attention to measurement
  • Selection of measures

• A book project + a deep yet narrow understanding
• Concern: Detail vs. Systematical
  
  

  

• But in practice:
  • Interests of time and space
  • At least a validation statement

• Open-book

• Identification \(\times\) 6 (30%)
• Interpretation \(\times\) 1 (30%)

• Short essay \(\times\) 2 (40%)

75 mins in total.

• Identification: 24 min (2 ~ 4 min/question)
• Interpretation: 5 ~ 10 min
• Short essay 40 min (15 ~ 20 min/question)

Question

Explan the following term: Dependent variable

Answer

Dependent variable is a variable assumed to depend on or be caused by the independent variable. (Babbie 18)

Question

What issue does the following image reflect? Explain why this issue could be problemetic for social science researh.

Answer (114 words)

The above image reflects an ecological fallacy issue. It happens when researchers erroneously drawing conclusions about individuals solely from the observation of groups (Babbie 103).

It could be problematic because the characteristics shown at the aggregate level of a group are not necessarily the characteristics of each individual in the group. In this case, any estimation about the individuals at the group level could lead to a misleading conclusion.

As shown in the image, each piece in this puzzle is irregular, but at the aggregate level, they compose a regular square. If one argues that each piece in the puzzle is a regular square because their composition is a square, this conclusion is invalid.

Question:

Why does Geddes recommend political scientist to use analystic narrative (Geddes 2010)? How can scholars apply it in political science? Using an example to illustrate.

Answer (222 words)

Analytic narrative is an approach in social science that focuses on the mechanisms that translate such macrohistorical forces into specific political outcomes. Geddes recommends this method because the goal of political science research is to understand underlying political processes rather than to explain, in the sense of identifying the correlates of, complex outcomes. Analytic narrative can help researchers to comprehend such understanding.

To apply it in the practice in political science, researchers should focus on the fundamental unit of politics and break up the traditional big questions into more precisely defined questions about what individuals do in specific situations that recur often enough to support generalizations about them. Moreover, Geddies points out finding the mechanism is an essential part but not the end product of political research. The research effort is not complete until empirical tests have shown that implications drawn from the argument are consistent with reality (Geddies 38).

Answer (Continued)

In the example Geddes provided to illustrate this approach, she is interested in the big question "no bourgeois, no democracy." To study this question, she narrows this question down to a specific focus of the transition from authoritarianism and identifies the fundamental unit in this process as the political rivalries and relationships. She draws implications about these relationships and the corresponding consequences of the transitions and uses empirical data to test them.

1. Being familiar with the materials ahead.
2. Using your time strategically.
3. Cite the sources of your anwers (e.g., "According to Babbie (75),…" or "……(Babbie, 75).")